The disappointment in seeing the big fish twice Mick Sheridan

 

I caught a big fish, the biggest one I’ve ever caught. Twenty full years of effort paid back.

After seventeen Gudgeon on one maggot, aged ten, I bought myself a landing net. Turner’s mocking father prescribed me ambitious, but I have never really been ambitious at all, he was wrong. He used to be worried about getting fishing-dirt on his chequered Chevette upholstery. His son turned ‘maggots in abundance’ into ‘maggots having a barndance’ which I found tedious even then.

I saw them with their carp, caught on cheese and sweetcorn, and I wanted one for myself. I took popcorn from an old glass jar in the cupboard and forced a hook through it. No good. As I looked more closely at their sweetcorn the mistake became clear. We didn’t have sweetcorn in our house.

In my ardour and with a fresh shaggy perm, I set out on a whole week’s fishing with Thurlow. The big lakes yielded nothing but a few Rudd on Noddy tackle. As we went back over to the canal I knew we’d been beaten. Thurlow’s umbrella blew away with the night rain and, delirious, he asked a man if he’d seen it floating anywhere. We knocked on someone’s door and phoned his dad having lasted three days.

I got my first carp some years later using unfashionable luncheon meat. I acted cool about it with my friends (the fish) but screamed inside. We decided it was easily five pounds and put it back. It was about three pounds.

When I caught the big fish my insides were already thumping jittery from a large eel. It was the way it twisted that frightened me most, it was my first, as soon as I saw it I was on new territory. It fixed me with both eyes as I disgorged it, it’s expression was one of strength and intent. I put it on the bank, near the edge, and watched it pierce the water unaided. They walk the valleys you know.

Although night was coming, my fear bred expectancy and I fancied a carp on the float. I knew they were there, bread flake, far bank. The float went and the rod bent. I’m rarely surprised at the power of the carp, and I wasn’t now. It kited right and came at me like a sub. It dived and stopped, thought, turned back and ran. It stripped line from the reel running like a loose train, silent engine. It came back again and stopped in front of me and throbbed, nodding its head, I congenially gathered line as it came nearer. Then it rolled and I saw it. ‘Jesus Jesus Jesus Christ its massive’. It was massive. I felt sick with responsibility, I would have to get this in my net. And I just did it, I just got it straight in my net, just like that. Bathos. I had fifteen minutes worth of abrupt, unrefined adrenaline racing in my veins to deal with. That and a great big fish. There it was in the net, ten pounds easy.

My mind said I’d played it for fifteen minutes, my watch said ten, the burning cigarette in the grass said five, liars - I believed my mind. An ordeal dotted with blank moments and lies. This is the manifestation of a big fish.

Unhook, photograph, return to water, pack up, drive home. I did all these things without heed. I sat at home with a huge fish burned on my retina, twelve pounds easy.

I now have two photographs of a medium sized brown fish. Two more lies. I need to get them re-developed by someone with a heart.